Martin stays in legend as journalist Sebastian Egan to exonerate Hani Jabril and find the real assassins of Prince Abdullah. DCO is forced to pursue the investigation 'off book', ultimately leading Martin into his most dangerous stand off yet.

David Hinckley

Kristi Turnquist

Legends, which is based on a novel by Robert Littell and produced by a team that includes "Homeland" veterans Howard Gordon and Alexander Cary, has an unusual sense of melancholy, which seems to emanate from Bean's soulful performance.

Mary McNamara

The 10-episode series, based on a book by Robert Littell and premiering Wednesday, has been constructed as a wide and solid if somewhat workmanlike platform for the British actor's considerable talents.

Joanne Ostrow

Ed Bark

Legends is too pockmarked with standard issue dialogue and situations to merit any awards for the series as a whole. But Bean, who this time is assured of staying vertical, might have enough pop in his performance to break on through.

Jeff Jensen

The high concept is poorly served by a conventional, lazily executed case-of-the-week structure. The show is exec-produced by Howard Gordon of 24 and Homeland fame, and if only he had brought his A game the way his star brought his, Legends could be more memorable.

Hank Stuever

He may not even know his real identity, which is what makes him so good at taking on imaginary aliases. From there, the show seems a bit predictably structured, but Bean lends a strong and complex presence to the idea.

Rob Owen

Darker and less escapist than TNT’s other new summer entry, “The Last Ship,” Legends offers a down-and-dirty hero with rough edges but surrounds him with a cadre of cleaner, less sullied colleagues, making for somewhat of a tonal mish-mash.

Brian Lowry

To its credit, Legends goes a bit beyond the expected stings, as a shadowy figure prompts Martin to doubt everything he knows and question whom he can trust. For the most part, though, almost everything here feels culled from earlier variations on this theme.

Mark A. Perigard

Tim Goodman

And yet, after watching the first two episodes, it's a shame that Legends (and TNT) weren't a bit more ambitious with the show. The pilot is splashy and action-packed, but overall the lack of complexity--and yes, I know I cited that as a plus earlier--makes it less satisfying.

Jeff Korbelik

David Wiegand

The potential of that longer story arc, as well as having Bean back on screen with his head reattached to his torso, may be enough to make Legends work despite the familiarity of that crime-solving-team template.

Alan Sepinwall

Matt Zoller Seitz

Legends makes a grand show of setting up a tortuous, vaguely Don Draper–like interior journey for our lone-wolf hero--in the pilot, he's stalked by a shadowy figure who intimates that Martin doesn't know all there is to know about his true self--but the character is such a pile of overworked cop-show and spy-show elements (he's in too deep, he's a cranky and sarcastic maverick who resents authority, his work destroyed his marriage, etc.), that there's not much to him beyond the charisma that Bean naturally brings.

Matthew Gilbert

The show could have been a fascinating dissection of self and Bean’s performance could have been tied to something expansive. But Legends is knee-deep at best, relying on feeble plots of the week and high-tech wizardry that borders on the unintentionally comic. The supporting cast is as shallow as Bean is deep.

Mike Hale

Presumably Legends is meant to seem more serious than those shows ["Rizzoli & Isles" and "Major Crimes"] and skew more male in its viewership, but it succeeds only in being more mechanical, predictable and thin.

Mark Dawidziak

Obvious similarities to the Jason Bourne films and other espionage stories are only part of the derivative drama's problems. The lurching plot turns are preposterous. The supporting characters are thinly drawn. The structure is terribly disjointed. And the dialogue ranges from ham-fisted to stilted.